A final comment to wrap up this thread, lest anyone interpret it as an endorsement of Waves products. It's not. If you haven't read the whole thread, here's a quick summary:

An aversion to dongles had kept me away from Waves. Their much-ballyhooed ditching of iLok prompted me to give them a try because Waves makes some unique plugins nobody else has.

Turns out, they're still just as psychotically paranoid as always and have merely substituted the Pace virus with a homegrown virtual dongle that may be equally susceptible to causing problems down the road. Their installation and authorization process is still unnecessarily convoluted. 

The plugin that I bought is pretty cool, although I did run into some unexpected behavior. Put the mono version on a stereo-interleaved track and it does obscene things to the signal. I have no other plugins that behave this way.

Luckily, the plugin does work and is easy to understand. Lucky, because there is no support for customers like me who just bought a plugin but not the upgrade plan. I don't mean lousy support, I mean no support. Says so right on their website.

For the most part, I still consider Waves products overpriced. This particular purchase was deeply discounted, and I would not have bought it at the regular price. For garden-variety tools such as compressors, limiters and reverbs there are just too many worthy competitors out there to choose from that don't assume you're a thief. 

Bottom line: right now it's unlikely I will be a repeat Waves customer. But you never know. Maxxbass would be a nice addition.